A Road Less Traveled

Robert Frost penned this poem, The Road Not Taken. We share it with our readers today as we have just come from a three-hour hike up to and down from the top of Buffalo Mountain in Virginia.

View from Buffalo Mountain in VA (photo by Tim Thornhill)

Spring is showing the first light green leaves delicately coming through the branches, leaving a view of the Blue Ridge below. A gentle breeze blows and when finally we reach the peak, the great boulders of rock greet us and make a place for us to rest our weary steps.

The path is filled with little blue flowers as they grow amid the rocks.

It is a path less traveled for most, but one we are glad we found even if our parting words, just like those of Frost, meant that we probably would not be there again.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(credit The Poetry Foundation)

Robert Frost is a famous and an oft-quoted poet. During his lifetime, he was honored with several prizes which include four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Frost was born on March 26, 1874. (Wikipedia)

Even though our path today was one filled with the beginning of Spring, the mountains here in the Blue Ridge will fill with lush, summer green and finally make their way into a beautiful Fall…until the first snows begin to drift down onto the paths and roads. Mr. Frost must have, like us, also loved the seasons.